Serial killer’s daughter to speak at Collin County abuse conference

When Melissa Moore was a child, she desperately wanted to escape her abusive stepfather. She thought her dad, whom she spent summers with after her parents divorced, could be her “savior.”

But Moore had no idea what she was wishing for.

Her father, Keith Jesperson, turned out to be leading a double life. He was later identified as the “Happy Face” serial killer who murdered eight women across the country in the early 1990s.

Moore, 34, will speak Thursday at a Collin County Council on Family Violence conference about how she overcame the violence of her youth. The conference, which runs through Friday during National Domestic Violence Awareness Month, will bring law enforcement, advocates and agencies together to combat domestic abuse.

Vanessa Vaughter, primary prevention counselor at the Hope’s Door shelter in Collin County, said Moore’s story will show people who work in the field that their efforts can make a difference.

“There is hope and there is life beyond,” Vaughter said. “You can move from victim to survivor to thriving.”

Witnessing horror

Moore, who lives in Frisco, was 6 years old when she realized her father had a violent streak. Moore and her brother were playing with a stray black cat in an alfalfa field near their family’s home in rural Washington state when Jesperson interrupted. He strangled the cat to death in front of his children, Moore said.

She said it was confusing because as a young child, she’d seen her neighbors kill turkeys for food. But “this was a different kind of kill,” she said. “He was laughing. He was enjoying it.”

Moore said her father never physically hurt her, but she was aware that the possibility was very real. So she did whatever she could not to upset him.

“Sometimes it’s not violence itself,” she said. “It’s the threat of violence.”

Her parents eventually divorced, but Moore’s mother remarried, and that introduced another level of abuse.

Moore remembers one time when she ate the beef stroganoff leftovers that her stepfather had wanted. He confronted and shoved Moore’s mother, who fell down the stairs and cracked her head, Moore said.

Though her stepfather primarily attacked her mother, the children suffered from witnessing the abuse. She said children who see or experience domestic violence “really don’t have a voice.” And during her childhood, Moore said, “I felt trapped, imprisoned almost, in other people’s actions.”

Violence was what she knew, and as a teen, she continued the cycle. Moore said her boyfriend was abusive and once raped her when she went to his house for pizza. When she became pregnant while a freshman in high school, he abused her to try to kill the baby. She eventually terminated the pregnancy, Moore writes in her book Shattered Silence: The Untold Story of a Serial Killer’s Daughter.

Doubting self-worth

Moore said the assault “perpetuated the worthlessness I thought I was,” and she began to understand why people like her mother stay in abusive relationships.

That was in 1995, and it was during this time that Moore wished her father would whisk her away from her violent surroundings. Though she felt an unexplained anxiety around him, she still saw him as her charismatic, albeit odd dad who taught her how to ride a bike and loved to watch Unsolved Mysteries on TV, Moore said.

But that same year, Moore learned the horrible truth: Of the men in her life, her father was the most violent of all.

Jesperson was arrested in the slaying of his fiancee and eventually confessed to killing eight women from Florida to Oregon. He became known as the Happy Face killer for the smiley faces he drew on letters claiming responsibility for the slayings. The former truck driver is serving a life sentence in an Oregon prison.

Soon after learning the truth about her father, Moore left her abusive boyfriend and changed high schools. She started college, which permanently freed her from the abuse at home.

Still, being around so much violence “breaks down your self-worth,” she said. And it took years to build hers back up.

Moore is married now. She is the mother of a 12-year-old daughter and a 9-year-old son. She’s working on a second book about her healing process and often speaks to young people about domestic violence.

Vaughter, with Hope’s Door, said she hopes the same openness will empower those at the conference.

“We’re not going to be afraid of it. We’re going to bring it into light, and we’re going to work together as a community to bring an end to family violence in Collin County,” she said.

The 11th annual Facing Family Violence Conference is Thursday and Friday at the Spring Creek campus of Collin College in Plano. For more information, visit conference@ccc-fv.org, call 972-769-0557 or go to ccc-fv.org.

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